Vegas, baby!

So this weekend is the USA's and I'll be driving up to Vegas tomorrow with my friend Stephanie. A bunch of people initially expressed an interest in going but now it's down to the two of us. As it turns out, none of the guys have money at the end of the month. I'm dragging Steph to most (if not all) of the bodybuilding stuff, but we're staying on the strip so we'll be sure to hit some other hot spots too. I want to take her to Chippendale's--wohoo!

I'm also ~15 weeks out from the nationals so I need to be sure to get my workouts and cardio in but it's not too bad at this point. Next week for sure I will kick it into high gear. I feel good about everything, but still have a good 20lbs to lose. I'll also try to get a few new pics for my site and maybe a few candids. It should be a fun weekend!

Tonight is the lab summer party--the infamous Crush N' Soak (named after an RNA buffer that sounds like a frat party). I think we have some board games and karoake lined up. I will have to cut out early to pack and get all my food together--hopefully I won't have to come back to the lab. I want to start the weekend a little early.

Thank You!

Yesterday I received a package from Skinn Cosmetics with a ton of free products to try! I just wanted to say thank you to the guy who sent it b/c I didn't save his email address. Hopefully he will see this. Check out: www.skinncosmetics.com.

Blue Bell

So I was listening to the radio this morning and they were talking about certain foods that you can't get in CA. The first thing I thought of was Blue Bell ice cream which you can only get in the south. And the first guy that called in was from Texas and said the same thing! Well, that and good chili. Not that it matters for me b/c I'm ~16 weeks out and already strict about my diet. I'm still making good progress so I'm happy. I should have new pics up early next week.

I'm always dragging by Friday and today is no exception. It was hard to get up and do my cardio at 6am this morning but I got it done--then trained arms before coming to the lab. It has been a frustrating week to say the least. I've been trying to run some samples on LC-MS since Sunday and finally ran most of them last night. First the problem was my new key had been miscut, then the tubing was not set up properly and kept leaking (2 nights), and last night it almost didn't work again. Thank goodness my friend was able to help me trace the problem back to one solvent pump and we were able to switch the lines around. And still the results were less than spectacular--about what I expected though.

Now I'm just waiting on my undergraduate student to come back from lunch so we can do some yeast transformations. I'm having him make some knockout strains. You can order most of them individually, but if you want to knockout multiple genes, you have to do it yourself. I love yeast though because it's so easy to manipulate their genomic DNA.

It would be nice if I could go home early to write but I'm not sure if that's going to happen. We also have the monthly chemical engineering social this afternoon. Now if only chemical engineers were social... Tomorrow is the LA bodybuilding competition so I'm hoping to make it out to the finals at least. Should be a good preview for the USA's next week. It looks like it's just me and Steph going but we will have a blast in Vegas!

Oh, I almost forgot--we tried a salsa dance class on wednesday night! It was pretty fun but wore me out for the rest of the night. It's here at Caltech but a lot of people from the local community come too. Still there were a lot more guys than girls...we'll have to go back!

just another manic monday

It's always a bad sign when I'm exhausted and it's only Monday! I don't know why I can never get to bed early enough on Sunday nights. Overall, I had a pretty restful weekend though. We went to the Improv in Brea and saw John Lovitz on Friday night. He was not entertaining IMO--his humor was a little immature. But the guy that opened for him, Jo Koy, was freakin' hilarious and made the outing more than worthwhile.

Then I didn't really do much Saturday and Sunday. I was scheduled to run some LC-MS experiments all day Sunday and grew up ~20 yeast samples only to find that my new key didn't work. So, I'm doing that tonight and tomorrow. Not much else going on in the lab. Things still seem a little slow--I'm just constructing some new yeast strains and testing them. I've practically given up working on my book chapter--it's just not happening. Maybe the mood will strike me the next couple of days. I haven't written anything substantial since my paper and that was excruciating!

Let's see--what else? I'll be going to the USA's in 2 weeks although I don't know who is going with me at this point. We are all broke grad students so it's hard to everyone to take a trip like that (especially at the end of the month). I should be doing a few offseason shoots while I'm there so look for that in the members section. I'll also try to include progress pics about every 2 weeks in the updates. I feel like I'm getting a lot tighter but haven't really been dropping weight since last week. This weekend will be 16 weeks so I may need to get a little more hardcore with the cardio, etc at that point. Ugh!

OK, so just as I was afraid of, I was horrified by my latest progress pics! But, the one on the left was taken a month ago and I can actually see improvements in the one on the right taken this morning (and I only changed my diet 2 weeks ago). So, I'm happy with that for now and still have ~18 more weeks.

Not much else going on. I had writer's block last weekend and didn't get nearly as much done as I had hoped. On top of that, I didn't get nearly enough sleep. We went to try to go to the Improv in Brea on Saturday and they were sold out so we went to a late movie and I somehow didn't get to bed until after 2am (and I am in the habit of waking up by 6am to do cardio no matter what). So, I need to turn in early tonight for sure...like now. I'll write more later.

OK, I do read the comments and will try to take a couple of pics this weekend. I hate taking progress pics--it's so embarrassing. I always look worse than I think which at least keeps me motivated I guess.

I had to come back to the lab for a few minutes tonight after going grocery shopping and putting some chicken in the oven. I'm just killing a few minutes while my gel is dissolving. The whole day was kind of a wash so I need to do some work tonight (writing, etc). I don't know what happened--it started with some of the guys going to get a few beers to share with a professor that was visiting from MIT. Then the next thing I knew we were all just sitting around shooting the shit until 7pm (with minimal labwork in between). And most of us in the lab don't even drink!

I'm excited b/c it looks like we're turning the USA's weekend in Vegas into a Smolke Lab road trip. I think several of the key members of the group want to go which would be a lot of fun. Some want to drink and gamble and I want to go to the show, but we can all hang out at a club or something together at night. OK, time for me to get going.

Well, the past few days have been pretty good despite having a rather lackluster holiday weekend. I feel like we got a good discussion going at our yeast subgroup meeting yesterday and am hopeful that this will be a nice change for us all and stimulate some new ideas in the lab. I want to start doing some things with another pathway that Win was working on to produce caffeine. It's not that interesting by itself, but if you could increase endogenous xanthosine accumulation, it would be a more interesting study (currently he has to feed this precursor). You could do similar things with my pathway to increase tyrosine production but I don't have to feed more than is added to normal media so this is not really a limiting factor. Not much other excitement today; just doing some research online and yet another Western blot.

So yesterday I had 3 people at the gym tell me that they can see improvements in my physique in just the past 2 weeks. This corresponds to when I started making changes in my diet but they didn't know that. They said that my muscles are fuller and I am leaner around the middle (and even in the face). It's hard for me to notice these things, so it was just really encouraging and makes me excited about the next 18 weeks. OK, just had to share!

Happy 4th of July

I have to admit, I have basically taken a 4 day weekend. I was in the lab everyday but haven't gotten much done. I finally realized today that I need to redesign some things--plus I'm waiting on some yeast strains, reagents, etc.

I was trying to relax a little so I watched a couple of movies which was nice--Crash yesterday and White Chicks today (one of the guys from my gym has a pretty big role in this so I had to watch it). Unfortunately, I haven't slept much. There was some drama Saturday night and then I was out late last night and keep waking up super early ready to do cardio.

I don't know if anyone saw a post a while back about one of my roommates, but I've been spending at least an hour every Sunday cleaning the kitchen until it sparkles when it's my roommate who completely trashes it every week. It is disgusting! So, it has stayed clean for about 24 hours and I hear her banging around in there now and am afraid to see the aftermath. I mean, I am 25 years old and do NOT want to live like a pig, nor do I want to have to constantly clean up after someone else like a child. OK, just had to get that off my chest.

So, I got an email today from my advisor that the book chapter I'm supposed to be working on is due at the end of the month--yikes! I've done some research but really have not even started on this. I need to get on top of it for sure; maybe it will help now that I have a deadline. Or maybe I'm writing this just to procrastinate a little more. Happy 4th of July everyone! Hopefully I will be watch fireworks at one of the lovely SoCal beaches!